Lens de luxe

Condé Nast Traveller contributing photographer Steve McCurry celebrates 30 years of travel with an exclusive new coffee-table book

Condé Nast Traveller contributing photographer Steve McCurry celebrates 30 years of travel with an exclusive new coffee-table book

Travel photography lovers: look no further for Christmas gift ideas. The latest release from Phaidon Press—Steve McCurry: The Iconic Photographs—is the ultimate coffee-table fix. A limited edition of 3,000 signed large-format books, this collection brings the culture and colour of McCurry’s work direct to your living room. Featuring 200 images from his extensive travels in South Asia, Africa and Europe, the book is a reminder of why the veteran US photographer is one of the most respected photojournalists of his generation. Better still, each book comes with a signed limited-edition print, meaning your walls get a touch of McCurry magic, too.

McCurry says of his love-affair with India and the region, “My attraction to South Asia goes back 30 years, to the two years I spent travelling through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and India as a young man.”

“No other region in the world has such a diverse group of religions and ancient cultures. You could spend several lifetimes in South Asia and still not experience all its diversity.”

He describes working on the new collection as an exercise in nostalgia, saying: “Selecting images for the book was a year-long process that involved digging through parts of my archive I hadn’t looked at for more than 20 years.”

Next on his list of places to photograph? “I dream of shooting in Cuba or the Galapagos Islands.”

Steve McCurry: The Iconic Photographs is available at Landmark for Rs19,039